Hot Pepper Jelly

Ever since I bought The Lee Bros. Southern Cookbook last year, I’ve had my eye on their recipe for Hot Pepper Jelly. In part because I’m a huge fan of anything with cream cheese. But most appealing was that the recipe called for green peppers. We receive a LOT of green peppers in our boxes and, quite honestly, not a big fan. Love red peppers; but green peppers, not so much. I usually hand them over to my Dad so he can make stuffed green peppers or I donate them back to the swap box.

But it’s a different story when I have the time and the other ingredients to make Hot Pepper Jelly. Then I can’t wait for the green peppers to arrive. This most recent batch of jelly posed a bit of a challenge – the recipe calls for jalapenos and, for those of us in the U.S., you’ll be hard-pressed to locate them in the grocery store because of the recent salmonella contamination. So, you can either hit your local farmers market or, if you’re lucky, raid your own garden. Otherwise, you can do what I did – substitute an equal volume (1 cup) of other fresh peppers. I used a combination of poblanos, cubanelles and one habanero for heat.

All of the pickling and canning recipes in The Lee Bros.’ cookbook are refrigerator pickles – meaning that they are not shelf stable, so you will need to keep them in the refrigerator. If you’re not familiar with basic canning principals and techniques, you should visit the National Center for Home Food Preservation’s website – a great resource to learn the do’s and dont’s of safe and successful canning.

Click here to download and print a pdf of this recipe:

Hot Pepper Jelly